


Dreams of Wires

by DawnsEternalLight



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dreams and Nightmares, Fear, Gen, Implants, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Loss of Control, Nightmares, Paralysis, Sad, Sleep Paralysis, Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-06 00:13:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11589054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawnsEternalLight/pseuds/DawnsEternalLight
Summary: Once, Damian's spine had to be replaced. While Talia was fixing him she had something else put in, letting Deathstroke take control of Damian and making him almost kill Batman. The plot was foiled, but the chip was never removed and since then Damian's had to live with it, and the fear that it might hurt him again.





	Dreams of Wires

Sometimes Damian dreamed he was a puppet with no strings. His body moved instead by wires and circuits, a chip burning at the nape of his neck.

It had never been removed. Slade had been put off fighting, the machine had been destroyed, Mother had seemingly forgotten about that attempt at control, but the chip, small as it was, still rested in the same place it had been installed in. There was no possibility of it coming back to life and paralyzing his control again. And yet, there were moments he felt as if he were paralyzed anyway.

He would wake up in a cold sweat, his limbs frozen. Sleep paralysis Father would say. But Damian did not have sleep paralysis, he never had and would not start now. No, it was the chip. The ghost of power that hung over him. The fear of possibility that captured him for seconds that felt like minutes that could have been hours if not for the red numbers of the clock in his room.

Grayson had told him once he'd gotten a good hit in against Deathstroke for Damian. For what he'd done to him. It had been meant to help him when he woke screaming and grasping. Had been meant to help wave away the ghost of someone else's control.

It had not made it any better.

No words could. Not when a shiver up his spine was mistaken for the electric hum that had filled his mind. Indicated only by a cold chill and spark of fire. The hum that stole his body and his agency. The hum that made Damian a prisoner in his own body, just sight and panic while everything else betrayed him.

It did not help when Brown, in a playful attempt at making him smile, pulled his arms up as if to make him dance. Or when he retaliated with words that bit and cut her the same way the realization that his mother had turned him into a _tool_ had. A plaything to be brought out when needed. A vessel like his Grandfather had attempted to make him into.

Hadn't she promised to protect him from that very fate?

Grayson's warm words and gentle hands did nothing to erase the violation he'd felt when his body refused to follow his commands. The body he had trained for years to gain power over. The one he had abused and scarred for complete control. His carefully crafted skill slipping like water through his mind as another took power.

Some nights when his body would not respond he would scream and scream until his voice was hoarse. Grayson coming to his side more often than not, fingers teasing the tangles from Damian's hair, arms pulling him into safety and a chest he'd once broken with a shovel, and a cry of warning, a plea to escape, of terror that he'd be forced to kill the one thing he had left in the world.

Those nights even Grayson's gentle reassurances could not stop Damian's flood of words. Of apologies and babbling panic. Of anything and everything his mind could conjure simply so he could prove to himself that he still had control. To drown out the gleeful voice in his head asking if they could make him speak. Of whispering their desire to be known as the tormentor, and the one who would use Damian's hands to kill Richard Grayson.

He poured out words to push back the alien feeling of his vocal cords bending to a new voice. Of his mouth forming words he would never say. Of his tongue hitting syllables with a harsh focus where his would be soft.

Damian would curl into arms that had pressed him against the trunk of a tree and sent shivers of electricity through his heart to break a connection, praying the one between the two of them would be enough now to keep his hand from brushing at the back of his neck searching for the ghost of a raised part of skin.

It was his secret. His dark hidden one that he tried to ignore, resting at the back of his mind, just above its physical location. It was his and Grayson's. And his mother's. And Deathstroke's. Damian was sure neither had thought of it for a very long time. But he did. Constantly.

If someone found out. If someone gained control. If he was traded from hand to hand and person to person, a sleeper agent able to be used to kill anyone close to him. It would break him. He buried it in his mind. He couldn’t talk about it or it may make the possibility real. If someone overheard him mention it. If they found out. If. If. If.

He had trusted Mother. She had promised to only have his interests at heart. It was by her word he was with his father’s family. By her order he had gone to them. He might have defied her wish for him to return home after his father’s apparent death, but until he was forced to return, broken and bleeding and unable to feel anything below his stomach he had been sure she still cared.

When he woke up in the water, floating suspended in a liquid filled with antibiotics and healing minerals he had not been afraid. The sharp pain at the back of his neck had been a reassurance. Only his body being repaired, only the promise of health and protection being placed in him. It had been a moment, a blink. He had trusted her.

It had not been the first time he’d woken under the blade of a surgeon, under his mother’s orders for a broken part of him to be replaced. Those times had not been as pleasant. Cold metal chilling his back. Both underneath him and holding him down, secure around his wrists and ankles and anything else that might jerk. Cutting into his flesh. Biting through warmth to strip it back and change. For as precious as his mother claimed he was, she had been reckless with his body. Pieces could be replaced. He had always thought that just meant his insides. The organs she switched out like batteries in a microphone.

He had not known it at the time. That her claims of love covered only how much he could do for her. It had been hard learning she could replace him too. The baby in the bubble. Heretic with his sword, steel cutting and cold. Taking out what was wrong to put back something better. What was wrong had been his heart. To his mother the monster had been better.

Then he woke up in Father’s arms. Kevlar that should have been cold was brushed with the heat of fire from an alien world, of wisps of magic used to knit his shattered body back together and weave his soul back into the place it belonged. Warmth flooded him inside and out, nothing replaced only repaired. And arms so strong and warm easing him back into the world he’d been cut out of.

He had not woken up replaced. Nor as a puppet.

He had woken up returned. With the knowledge that the ones who loved him did so because of himself and not what he could do. With powers that gave him further control over his surroundings. Powers that made him feel like nothing could steal him again. Even as they faded they left him content in his body, a semblance of control returned.

It was not perfect. It had come at a cost. After, when he woke up screaming and pleading for release from the strings that bound him, and the hum at the back of his head there was no Grayson to comfort him. No solid proof he had not killed the man with his own hands. And hadn’t he though? Hadn’t he failed him when hands that shared his DNA stole Damian and took away Grayson’s protection. The hand’s might not have been connected to his body, but they were his all the same. And because of them his brother was gone.

It was not a dream when his brother stood across from him on a rooftop. Nothing but Damian’s own strength propelled him into arms he’d been sure he’d never feel again. Into a chest he’d come to associate with safety and home. Nothing in him could be angry that his brother had been faking it. Not when it removed the guilt of his own hand in Grayson’s death.

Grayson’s return did not stop the phantom brush of power in his spine. It quieted it. Returned Damian’s surety that he had not yet been forced to hurt his family. But it did not stop the fear. Or the dreams.

It was a nightmare that told his family his secret. He had been foolish enough to fall asleep tucked next to Grayson, his family close by for a film. He was tired. Nightmares had been plaguing his dreams and stealing his sleep all week. He’d dreamed his body was not his own. That he was a ghost poured into a shell controlled by another. His spine burned.

He woke up to hands on his arms, and one in his hair, and ankle, and he only screamed louder. Panic that they would take him away rushed him. They would make him hurt his father and his siblings. Mother’s men would strap him down and fix the chip and he would have no power.

Blue eyes, and dark hair, and a voice he knew no matter what mask hid the rest of his features pulled him back. The other hands and heat gone and the world was Damian and Grayson again. He knew if it had happened the man in front of him could fix it. He’d done it before, he could do it again.

His father was furious. A storm that knew no bounds. A whirlwind of emotion and fury buried in pacing and hard lines and cold questions. His sister was a hand running through his hair, a reminder that she had once lost her careful control over her body before too. His middle brothers were fire, ice, and action. How can we help? How can we make this right? Damian could not look at Pennyworth. He had known, but not the extent. He buried the shame of his weakness in Grayson’s shoulder and wished he could sneak away.

Grayson would not let them strap him down. Not while he was awake at least. He was firm as Father and he stood around Damian, seated on a cot in a hospital, he had never seen before, as a nurse tried to explain procedure. Grayson refused to leave Damian’s side, refused to let anyone but himself be the one to give his brother the medicine that would put him under. Damian was sure he’d have refused even the hospital if he were capable of removing the chip on his own.

This time as Damian drifted off to sleep, he was surrounded by those he loved and trusted and knew the feelings were returned. Both his hands were warm, encased in two different ones, callused from work and reminders he wasn’t alone. And when he dreamed it was of the wires being cut. Of circuits being removed, and at last a cool breeze at the back of his neck.

**Author's Note:**

> Takes reference from Morrison's Batman and Robin run mainly issues 10-12, but some before that, and Grayson issue 16.


End file.
